Thread by @sgurumurthy

Asking an identical question, “Why China flew, India just grew?” Forbes magazine (2019) answered that it was because of the barrier-free autocracy in China and nightmare democracy in India. Is this correct. Read on....newindianexpress.com/opinions/colum…

Yangtze Dam flooded 13 cities, 140 towns, 1,350 villages displaced 1.2 million people. Built in 12 years. Narmada Dam flooded no city. Inundated no town. Impacted far less villages, just 178. Displaced less than 1/10 of the people the Chinese dam had. But took 48 years to build!

Why, then, wouldn’t China fly over just growing India, asked Forbes. But the magazine missed the wood for the trees. For 25 years (1989-2014) India had only rickety, compromising coalitions, which had debilitated the economy. This is what Forbes sadly missed.

Narmada Dam took five times longer to build. Why, then, wouldn’t China fly over just growing India, asked Forbes. But it missed the wood for the trees. For 25 years (1989-2014) India had only rickety, compromising coalitions, that debilitated the economy. Forbes sadly missed this

1990s when globalisation was opening lucrative Western markets to all, India saw 4 parliament polls, 4 govts, 7 prime ministers. V P Singh 11 months. Chandrashekhar 4. Narasimha Rao, 5 years Vajpayee 13 days. Deve Gowda 11 months. Gujral 11 months. And Vajpayee again 13 months.

Would the West look at India, whose govts life qwe measured in months, days, instead of China firmly Deng Xiaoping? Hoping to make the stable China a democracy rather than attempt to make the Indian democracy stable, the US began “positive engagement” with China in 1993.

Things did improve between 1999 and 2014 with coalition governments for full terms. Vajpayee, had better control over his coalition, even boldly opted for the Pokhran II explosion. But Sanjaya Baru says Manmohan's media advisor, Singh was just a proxy for Sonia, the real power

How long would 10 Indian governments between 1989 & 2104 last in office was always a question. Result, a whole generation of Indians had lost hope that India could ever have a stable government with absolute majority under a strong leader And so did the world which swung to China

In 2014, when Modi won absolute majority after 30 years, paradigm shifted, world stunned. Not just Modi, Indian democracy gained world’s confidence. In 2019, US magazine Foreign Policy even said Indian democracy is the silver lining, even golden lining of world democracies

Had a government with a majority of its own been in power in the 1990s, like in 2014, autocratic China would not have been the default choice of the West. When India changed hands from one PM to another seven times in 10 years, would West need a better reason to turn to China?

Result? The early bird China wrapped up 70 strategic partnerships by 2020 Late entrant India managed only 20. No nation would choose India — whose govt could fall the next day — as a long-term partner. This is what changed in 2014 with instanresult. Modi emerged a global leader.

Monthly survey of US-based Morning Consult, says since Jan 2020 till now, Modi is top of 13 leaders from the US to Australia. Long used to be led by others, India is now playing lead role in the multilateral fora. G7-plus, G20 meetings and the COP26 testify to India’s lead role.

The world is turning to India like it was turning to China in the 1990s. The UBS Evidence Lab CFO Study, Information Technology and Innovation Fund research, Bloomberg report and Qina Report point to the US and the West shifting away from China to India

Japan-Australia-India trade ministers held a meeting in April 2021 to move away from China in semiconductor tech. By strategic Pokhran II, India shed its reservation about global power play. With Indians giving him full majority, Modi has actually led India into global power play

Backed by the absolute majority from the people, Modi set such long-term goals, planned on such scales as not imagined in India earlier. Result, in the seven years from 2014, he succeeded in executing massive schemes like opening bank accounts for 43.81 cr unbanked poor....

....installing 11.5 cr public and private toilets; achieving six lakh-plus open defecation-free villages; building 2.33 lakh-km long rural roads; constructing 2.13 crore houses for the poor; electrifying all villages; providing electric connections to 2.81 cr homes.....

....:fixing 37.8 LED bulbs to reduce power consumption; laying optical fibre to 1.69 lakh villages; giving free cooking gas connections to 8.7 cr homes; extending medical insurance to 25.6 cr people, life insurance to 11.16 cr, crop insurance to 11.6 cr farms;...

....putting cash directly in 11.77 cr farmers’ bank accounts; issuing 22.81 cr soil health cards; lending to 33.8 cr micro businesses; bringing 3.42 cr people, plus 55 lakh self-employed under pension schemes; linking 1.71 cr farmers under e-market....

.....connecting 1.85 cr students and youth with online courses for skilling; arranging 1.46 lakh post office payment banks in villages; issuing 129.5 cr Aadhaar identity cards to every Indian resident and 4.9 cr biometric identity certificates. The list goes on...

...The speed with which he worked his plans is measured by just one fact. Till 2014 — in 64 years — the length of national highways built was 91,287 km; but in Modi’s seven years alone it was 46,338 km — 50% more. Modi’s development plans are intensely integrated....

...He could not have opened tens of crores of bank accounts for the unbanked without Aadhaar card to all, without optical fibre to lcas I'd villages, without lakhs of doorstep banks or without lakhs of kms of village roads....

Nor without these could he have provided several tens of crores in medical insurance, crop insurance, life insurance, soil health cards, toilets, cooking gas connections, health cards or put cash in tens of crores of farmers’ bank accounts. Without one another is impossible.

Purgatives, to detoxify:
Modi administered unpopular purgatives to the economy like demonetisation (DM), GST, bankruptcy law, privatisation of PSUs to make his long-term development plans work. Many fault DM for failing to catch black money, while exposing people to hardship.

DM brought the informal and black trade into registered accounts. But for DM, the taxpayer base of India which was 3.79 cr till 2016, would not have shot up to 6.84 cr in 2018 — a rise of 80%. The tax-GDP ratio, too, would not have gone up.